Found it! Actually thought I’d lost the write up there. If you want to be terminally bored, you can also read Appendix C, which is a laborious and overly-formatted protocol definition.

Okay, well this is a tricky call to make, since Torque annoyingly no longer provides the whole ‘free if you render a Torque logo in the corner all the time’ licence, so I can’t actually download the source code to see how it looks. However, I have tried out Crystal Space, and while its free, I must say I’ve not been impressed by the layout or demos. In addition, Torque has pedigree so to speak, and while the demos all look and feel to me like Tribes (understandably so), thats not necessarily a bad thing. The netcode design seems pretty sound (and actually not hugely far away from my original model); so it should suffice for a demo, and hopefully be easy to refactor later into the production model.

So, I’m going to fork up the cash and buy and indie licence for Torque for 100 USD and see how that goes. Thank goodness for the crappy US exchange rate just now, eh?

On an unrelated note, I’m tempted to try and find a copy of my original fourth year Uni report, as its got quite a lot of relevant stuff, and maybe host it here for all to read (rather than it just languishing in some room in the J.C.M.B. untouched for the rest of time).

Well, back from an enjoyable (read: liver-bashing) bank holiday weekend to the real work. In one of my trademark sweeping and poorly justified decisions, I’ve decided that the Company will take bank holidays off, and not count them in the regular holidays. Thats something about my old job which I was undecided about the merits of it, but I think its good for morale to get the holidays which everyone else gets – its pretty depressing when you have to go to work, but everyone else is planning for long weekends.

Anyway, found a useful piece on Joel on Software, recommending VMWare. Looks like an invaluable tool for diagnosing installation problems and various other configuration nasties that plague PC games development. “It works on my machine” isn’t really a solution.

On todays agenda: some more financing research, some more writing up of mid-level designs for some of the ideas bandied around in the forums (to try and find any gaping holes), and poking and prodding of game engines to see if they’re suitable for building our demo on. Currently top of the pile are looking like Crystal Space and Torque (a la Tribes) .

Okay, I think I’ve mastered at least some of this webmaster stuff. Forums are online and running, available to all. The same rules apply there with respect to IP and posting, etc.

The wiki is also up and running, however that one is just for staff at the moment, as I intend to start writing the actual design documents up in there. That may change at a later date, I suppose we’ll just have to see how things get used. Suck it and see, so they say.

Again, all feedback and/or questions welcome, either post here or drop me a mail.

Okay, while I’m wrestling with phpBB and trying to get a set of forums up, I’ve taken down the design ideas previously posted (as Slopey pointed out, its probably much better to put those in a less public place, and insist on registration before they can be read). I’m also going to put a wiki site up somewhere here as well, so it can be used for internal documentation and development stuff.

What do you mean, I’m just playing with all these new web-toys? Shame on you. Legitimate development work, of course it is.

Well, all hail the power of the In-tar-web, after a few hours of fiddling, we now have a development blog!

Of course, its totally empty just now, but I’m sure I’ll manage to fill it up with badly thought out design ideas, complaints about the Inland Revenue and all the other things which make running a games studio so much fun.

You do have to log in to post, as the majority of the help that comes with WordPress amounts to ‘ooh! Comment spam, bad!’, so rather than allow that spectre in, I thought I would just check it at the door. Plus it means that all the insulting comments about me, my company, my personal hygiene, etc. have to put a name to it, so I can wield the almighty head-rush-inducing power of the ban stick against them. As another thing to remember before you register – check out the disclaimer dealing with intellectual property and so forth before you blurt out your favourite game ideas.

Hopefully that won’t put too many of you off registering and wading in with discussion and feedback. Of course, thats assuming there is a ‘you’ out there to discourage. Hello? Hello? (echoes…)